Downstream users of OpenStack (users, but also packagers and lifecycle
management tools) need to know whether they can count on a source
of reliable bugfixes for a given component.

This tag indicates that a project team maintains stable branches for a given
deliverable, and that those stable branches are maintained following the common
Stable branch policy, as defined by the Stable branch maintenance team.

All OpenStack project teams can create stable branches, with the
name of their choice. However, some of those branches do not follow the
Stable branch policy: some approve backports that modify the behavior
of the software, some backport new features, some do not actively backport
significant bugfixes, some don’t monitor proposed backports, or monitor
the CI system on their stable branches...

That creates confusion for packagers and deployers of our software, which
no longer know what to expect from a stable branch. Having stable branches
is no longer a guarantee of an up-to-date source of safe fixes.

To replace it, this tag is granted by the stable branch maintenance team only
to deliverables which have stable branches maintained following the common
Stable branch policy. This lets downstream users easily determine which
projects adhere to the common rules, and expose what the common rules are to
a wider audience. As a side-effect, it encourages more project teams to
follow the policy.

The tag can only be applied to software components of an OpenStack cloud
(openstack, openstack-operations on the map) and associated libraries
(openstack-libs). It is not meant be applied to SDKs (openstack-user)
or deployment tools (openstack-lifecyclemanagement).